Shopping on the Internet is vastly different from shopping in physical marketplaces in many ways. One significant difference is that the online shopping model is search-oriented, i.e. based on the user typing in a query and finding the corresponding products in the top results. Thus, online shopping is well suited to the goals of a user who has a specific type of product in mind that they would like to buy. Such a user wants to be able to find their choice product quickly or to compare close alternatives and variants of the same product.
On the other hand, many users simply enjoy the activity of shopping and like to browse a variety of different items before they decide to make a purchase. Such a shopping experience has traditionally been well suited only for offline or physical marketplaces, for example by walking into a department store or a shopping center and looking around. Search-oriented online shopping sites do not provide a full or satisfactory “look around” functionality.
The present invention seeks to address these and other problems to provide an enhanced online shopping experience, allowing, in part, for the user to experience the online equivalent of browsing around a physical marketplace and providing the user with relevant products.